I hate being in this "club", but I have been there. A few years ago I wanted a new van. Mine was pushing the 5-yr mark and I was eady to get another. I didn't take this lightly because I LOVED the one I had (Mercury Villager). I looked for 10 months then decided I would get another Villager. I am quite the haggler so I found what I want, researched on the internet then found the vehicle at a dealer here and went in with my figures and what I was willing to offer. They played their games so I got up and walked out. Before I had got a mile away, my cell phone rang. It was the manager and he wanted to deal. I told him I had other things to do and would be in the next day if I was able. I didn't show or call (trying to make them sweat) then the next day I called him back, told him what I was willing to pay and what I wanted for my trade. He said that if I came down then he would see what he could do. I told him that I had been looking for
10 months, already test drove that model and they had already looked at my trade so there was NO reason for me to come in unless they were willing to meet my prices. He said he would call back. He called back pretty quickly and said that he would do it. I made him repeat all the figures then told him I would think about it over the weekend (it was a Friday). I called him back on Monday, had him repeat the figures again, told him to run my credit (I knew it was spotless) and let me know when to come by to sign the papers and trade keys. He called about 2 hours later and said that they were able to get it approved because of my history with Ford Motor Credit (I was 35 at the time and had ONLY driven and financed with Ford). I thought it strange that he had said that since I KNEW I had spotless credit (we've never been even one day late on a bill). When we got there and signed everything, I asked about what he said. He told me that I did indeed have spotless credit, BUT a very high debt ratio. I was stunned. We got copies of our credit reports and found $19,757 in debt that wasn't ours. I was about to faint. My wallet had been stolen in 1993 so we figured this was a fallout from that (it was the year 2000 when this was going on). We started digging about found that a FAMILY MEMBER had done this! It wasn't the stolen wallet at all. The weird/fortunate thing was that they were actually paying the bills. They had figured they were only borrowing our credit rating and by paying on time, we would never know and it wouldn't hurt us! We spoke to our bank and were told that the only thing we could do was to report it to the police, BUT they would end up in jail and it could take years to clear up our credit. She suggested that if the people were paying, maybe it would be better to allow them to continue doing so. We thought about it and let it go. At this point, 3 of the 4 credit cards are paid off and one is still being paid (balance is just below $6,000 right now). I get a "pit" in my stomach every month around the 24th (the day the payment is due) and it stays there until the payment is made.
As for removing things from your credit, we did a re-fi on our current home (only home we've ever owned) and a Federal Tax Lien came up on my credit. We had never even lived in that state. We called the court house, they charged us $2 or $3 (can't remember) and sent us a copy of the tax lien (the numbers were on the credit report so we just gave them that and the Freedom of Information Act allowed us to get it). The people had done a "this is on our credit erroneously" thingy and put it on ours (names are similar). I took it to the mortgage company. He had our current mortgage showing we had lived here all that time so there is no way we could have sold a house while owing taxes in that state, plus we had no history of a mortgage there so it wasn't like we had a rental or anything. He took care of fixing it through the credit bureaus. It took about 3 months. What a pain in the neck! The bank went ahead and approved everything since they had the documents showing that the one bad mark was not true.
I guess I'm trying to say that if you get a good bank guy in your corner, you can avoid all the legal feels. Whatever way you decide to go with this, I wish you the best of luck. Hang onto your sanity as you go through this! It makes you feel horrible, but remember that YOU didn't do anything wrong!!!!
Cecelia